Menu
STUDY LEVEL
Certificate
TUITION
$699 USD
DURATION
9 weeks
INTAKES
Jan/Apr/Jul/Oct
DELIVERY MODE
Online
about the course
What will you learn?
This 2D Animation Essentials course will help students develop their visual accuracy when drawing poses, which will help in creating animations that feel more in line with nature and real life. From the basic principles to the importance of emotion, this course will focus on understanding how to create appealing and efficient 2D animations.
By the end of the course, you will become skilled at strong facial expressions, how to break down a line of dialogue, how to create motion blur, and how to use video reference to improve your animation.
student gallery
Graduate with an outstanding portfolio
Learn the basic principles of 2D Animation.
Helps students apply the principles more effectively to their work.
One year of free access to the full course.
Enjoy one-year full access to the course that includes lectures, feedback, and live Q&A recordings.
Earn a Certificate of Completion.
Earn a Certificate of Completion when you complete and turn in 80% of course assignments.
Personalized expert feedback and live Q&A.
Receive personal individual feedback on all submitted assignments from the industry’s best artist.
course structure
What will you learn?
Week 1 | Introduction and animation basics
- Review of the Animation Principles using simple shapes (sphere, cube) animating these forms in an easy to understand demonstration.
- Carryover these principles into a flour sac character and finally into a simple character design of a human
- Loose drawing overview and demonstrations
Week 2 | Understanding and decomposing a movement
- What motivates a character? Emotions? Dialogue?
- How to take a large acting shot and reduce it to the essential body poses that will communicate the most with the least amount of drawings
- Break down the behavior into Key poses
Week 3 | Animating straight head
- Stretch / Smears: Tips on the various styles of drawing motion blur and smears
- Animating and demonstrating a simple flour sac and also a simple human character to showcase the effectiveness and pose to pose and straight-ahead animation
- In addition, a demonstration on the non-performing character like Fire, and Water make a great demonstration of straight ahead animation.
Week 4 | Animation as a communication tool
- Silhouettes and finding the BEST pose for a given movement
- Compare a movement with two versions of choreography
- Version A is one with little attention to silhouettes and Version B is of the same animation utilizing more effective silhouettes.
Week 5 | Overlaps/follow thru
- Demonstrate overlap using a walking cycle.
- Create props like earrings, hair, bags, and hats to convey the concepts of overlap.
Week 6 | Choreography
- Utilizing Video footage to act out and/or reference the timing and mechanics of a performance
- The video can be a dance movement, footage from a film, or self-made footage.
Week 7 | First rough animation
- Create an animation using an original design with a line of dialogue
- Film references, model sheets, and character design studies will be created to help in this process.
Week 8 | Tie down w/finished rough
- Demonstrate how to smooth out the animation and introduce the inking and coloring process for the next steps.
Week 9 | Finish tie down
- Continue work on final projects.
ENTRY REQUIREMENTS
What do you need to apply?
- Students should have a foundations animation class prior to this class as well as a strong sense of figure drawing.
- OR
- Completion of the Foundations in Modern 2D Animation course
start your creative career today
Discover more about
this course
Because you are interested in this course
You might also like…
Do you need help from one of our student counselors?
Book a FREE consultation with one of our friendly Student Enrolment Advisors